First Love
I don’t know how art can unglue me so. There’s nothing else like it but lovemaking. In D.C. on Sunday I welled up with emotion at the National Gallery of Art’s Andrew Wyeth exhibit, an exhibit I had been waiting three decades to see. Finally standing in front of the vivid scenes of Wyeth’s world brought tears to my eyes. I wanted to stretch out in the spot of sunlight and open the trunk in McVey’s Barn, take the apples from the porch in Frostbitten and put them on the empty plate in Groundhog Day, drape a favorite coat over the empty hanger on the porch in Looking Out Looking In. I wanted to press my nose up close to the window that looked onto a another window looking onto a green field, or jump through Olsen’s Door and run in the field of wheat colored grass, trying not to trip on the bucket in Weatherside. 
In my early 20’s I fell in love with the boy wearing a coonskin hat in Faraway. I realize now that it was because I recognized a part of myself in him, the Davy Crockett loving girl and the future me that would come to live in the rural mountains of Virginia. I was awakened by Wyeth’s lace curtained windows looking out onto hay fields, his barns and buckets and woodpiles. The yellow wallpaper and the warmth of sun on the place setting in Wyeth’s Groundhog Day had a strong effect on me. It once hung in my first mother-in-laws dining room. I loved her and have loved Wyeth ever since.
September 23rd, 2014 1:21 pm
That was beautiful! I feel the same way. Would love to see that exhibit.
September 23rd, 2014 8:57 pm
The way you wrote about this was so wonderfully exquisite, Colleen–I felt like I could see these paintings with you. How great that you finally got to see so very many of these beautiful scenes, ALL in one place…..And thanks so much for sharing the experience with all of us!
September 24th, 2014 1:25 am
So lovely to see that art can still move us. I do love those pictures.
September 24th, 2014 8:06 am
Thank you for sharing your ‘passion’ so beautifully. And who can resist a chap in a Davy Crockett hat??
(:
September 24th, 2014 9:03 am
You have such passion Colleen and you are an artist yourself. That is why you feel so close to this and tearful.
I would totally love to this exhibit too!
We did like Monet, Renoir and Van Gogh in our younger years. But there is nothing like Andrew Wyeth with his precision and no abstract.
I saw the Norman Rockwell exhibit and home with Nelson and I was in awe as well!!!
September 24th, 2014 9:32 am
I remember seeing that coonskin hat print somewhere. Maybe you wrote about it.
I love art of all kinds. Cute & serious art.
September 24th, 2014 10:13 am
We saw some Monet, Van Gogh and more at the Gallery too. And we went to the Hirshhorn Museum and I took a lot of pictures for Naomi. Her father is Joseph Hirshhorn who donated a lot of the masterful art there.
September 24th, 2014 10:31 pm
[…] 2. I had been wanting to see a Wyeth exhibit for more than three decades and I cried when I finally did. “ I wanted to stretch out in the spot of sunlight and open the trunk in McVey’s Barn, take the apples from the porch in Frostbitten and put them on the empty plate in Groundhog Day, drape a favorite coat over the empty hanger on the porch in Looking Out Looking In. I wanted to press my nose up close to the window that looked onto another window looking onto a green field, or jump through Olsen’s Door and run in the wheat colored grass, trying not to trip on the bucket in Weatherside.” More HERE. […]
September 25th, 2014 1:58 pm
Sounds like an exhibit I would have liked!
September 25th, 2014 10:53 pm
We went to the Wyeth museum in Chadd’s Ford some years back. I think my husband has a crush on Helga!
September 30th, 2014 2:29 pm
My mother had a framed print of Groundhog Day. I had forgotten this but seeing your photo of it brought my mother back to me so clearly I felt an ache in my heart from missing her.
(Memories can be so visceral.)
September 30th, 2014 3:46 pm
My eyes fill when I look at it too because it reminds me of my mother-in-law who I love and who recently passed. http://looseleafnotes.com/2013/02/aka-patricia/
October 1st, 2014 9:50 pm
[…] The best compliment comment of the week came with my shadow shot photography at the art galleries in D.C. when a reader wrote, “You made your own art in addition to viewing what was on display!” […]
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